Poach fruit for wintertime. Peel fruit, and put it in hole. Know it’s cooked when you put a knife in it and it’s soft. Doesn’t need too much liquid, because it makes it own juice, put a cinnamon stick in it.

To make apple or pear butter, poach and then put in blender and add some spices. Lots of recipes online.

Eating or harvesting vegetables or fruit on time?

Plan garden as to when they come up. Lettuce is an early spring vegetable, it bolts in heat of summer, then in fall it comes up good again. Some veggies grow quickly, peas are early spring, not summer.

Had a wonderful squash success last year.

Do you have any special techniques for cooking weird or unusual foods?

Squash flowers, need to be gentle, wash and dry softly with a paper towel, make a flour and water batter that is kind of runny, dip flowers and sauté until crisp. Eat right away.

A favorite recipe you like to cook?

Have a basic sauce for cooking with chicken, fish, vegetables,

2 tbls olive oil

tablespoon of butter

chop an onion/and a bit of garlic.

Sauté, add some wine – white or white vermouth – just a couple of splashes – ⅛ of a cup or so.

Cook with children…let them taste vegetables raw while cooking, baking seeds, pull spaghetti squash apart, grow little tomatoes so they can pop them in their mouth…

Planting native plants to encourage birds, bees, butterflies to become part of your garden because they really are endangered, and need to have gardens healthy for all of the animals and helping work on our climate.

Founded in 1969, Clark Botanic Garden is a 12-acre living museum and educational facility. They are dedicated to understanding and appreciating the world’s plant life through horticulture, education and research. Collections at the garden include native spring wildflowers, conifers, roses, perennials, daylilies, wetland plants, rock garden plants, herbs, butterfly plants, medicinal plants and over a dozen collections of particular plant families. Clark Botanic Garden also has a wonderful gift shop.

Nutmeg in the garden

Thanks for visiting Mike’s Green Garden. If you like what you heard on the Organic Gardener Podcast we’d love it if you’d give us a 5 star rating on iTunes so other gardeners can find us and listen to. Just click on the link here:

If you have any comments, questions, guests you’d like to see, or topics you’d like us to cover please send us any feedback positive or negative. We’re here to serve our audience and we can only improve with your help!!! Thanks for visiting Mike’s Green Garden changing the world one garden at a time.